Today, we're talking about increasing blood flow by utilizing laser therapy. Blood flow is essential for all the functions of all the tissues in your body. Every cell needs some level of input from blood flow. We're talking about oxygen delivery, nutrients and so forth. So, you need to have good blood flow if you're going to have healthy tissues. One of the things that happens in injury is blood flow is oftentimes reduced by the presence of swelling, and positive pressures that prevent enough blood flow from getting into the area. The process of less blood flow actually inhibits tissue healing. So, getting enough blood flow to an area is very, very important. That's one of the reasons that you'll be directed to try to minimize swelling to an injury by resting and elevating it.
What kind of medical conditions would benefit from increased blood flow? Nerve damage. Big time. Neuropathy, nerve damage, can occur in many different conditions. It doesn't have many good solutions or treatments out there, but promoting better blood flow to those nerves can oftentimes greatly diminish the symptoms and even reverse some of the damage. So, if you can get more blood flow to damaged nerves, many times they heal, and the symptoms reduce quite well.
Same thing for a sprained ankle, for example. If you get more blood flow there, the tissues heal faster. So, these athletic injuries such as sprain/strains do much better if you can get more blood flow. You could name just about any condition and almost all of them can do much better with improved blood flow. The only condition you would say wouldn't do better with more blood flow would be an active hemorrhage. Right? If you're bleeding, you really don't want more blood flow.
So here's the study we'll be referring to today- Limb Blood Flow After Class Four Laser Therapy
The study says that laser therapy induces changes in blood flow and microcirculation to promote healing by controlling ischemia, hypoxia, and edema after injury. So, ischemia is a lack of blood flow. Hypoxia is a lack of oxygen, and edema is swelling. Those three things together, if you can control those factors, then you can limit the amount of damage that takes place over time, as well as speed up healing. The authors of the study say increased circulation in and around the injury zone creates a favorable environment for biological repair after a musculoskeletal injury. A musculoskeletal injury is anything involving the muscles or the skeleton: fractures, sprain/strains, rotator-cuff tears, etc.
What the researchers did is they applied laser to the bicep muscle using a K-Laser device; then they measured blood flow in the forearm. What is a K-Laser?
Not just any kind of laser will do; not all lasers are the same. You've got lasers that can shoot down drones. And you've got a laser pointers that people use every day in presentations. What are we talking about here when we say laser for therapy and specifically for improving blood flow? Well, the authors discuss Class 3B lasers versus Class 4 lasers. Now Class 3 lasers mean power of 5 to 500 milliwatts. That's what we consider a low-powered laser or a cold laser, or low-intensity laser. Class 4 lasers, however, are any lasers that emit power more than 500 milliwatts. So, from 500 milliwatts up to 1 Watt, even as far as 20 or 100 Watts, those lasers are all in the Class 4 category.
The paper says, Class 4 lasers can emit greater photonic energy in a shorter period of time than Class 3B lasers without producing an appreciable rise in tissue temperature under normal treatment protocols. What that means is you can take one of these high-powered Class 4 lasers and apply it in a way with the right settings that, instead of heating up tissues, deliver the same type of laser effects as the lower powered lasers, just in a shorter period of time. The paper also says this higher power becomes important when treating injuries to deeper tissues, such as ligaments, muscles, tendons, and cartilage. Several published reports have questioned the ability of low power lasers to effectively transmit energy beyond the skin and to deep musculoskeletal tissues.
So what is a K-Laser? It is a Class 4 laser specifically designed to safely and effectively treat injured tissues and reduce pain. Again, what these researchers did is they applied class four K-Laser to the bicep muscle, then they measured blood flow before and after and during the treatment, down in the forearm with the hypothesis. The idea was that lasering the bicep would actually improve and increase circulation downstream from where they lasered. And that's exactly what they saw. They applied laser for four minutes, then they measured the blood flow and observed that, with a three-watt dose, blood flow increased from baseline levels at the last minute of the treatment, and it persisted for up to two minutes after the treatment. Even after the laser was discontinued, they still saw ongoing improvements in blood flow. They did not observe any changes in blood flow for a 6-watt setting, a 1-Watt setting, or a sham dose. Want to get more details? Check out the podcast.
So, what's the conclusion? Well, they say that a properly designed laser treatment protocol with appropriate dose guidelines is a viable therapy to increase limb blood flow. So, not just any injury, not just any laser, not just any power setting, you have to have the right protocols. You have to have the right equipment. You must be targeting the tissues correctly for this to really work well. And that is probably why a lot of folks out there who have tried laser don't necessarily see some of the results that should be achievable.
If you're dealing with a condition that could improve quickly with better blood flow—whether that be a sprain/strain injury, muscle tear, rotator cuff tear, arthritis, any of these conditions that could improve with better blood flow—you might want to look into laser therapy.